Category Archives: Single Author Collection Reviews

I am a new short fiction reader but I think that The Paper Menagerie is the best short story collection I’ve read so far. I remember reading Mono No Aware about 2-3 years ago and just loving the story so much. I tried a few of his other stories over time and I knew that he was an author that just connected with my reading style and interests. I believe that Ken connects the reader to his characters in a way that few writers can. His stories rarely focus on the fantastical or the science-fictional aspect that the stories involve but instead focuses on the emotions of his characters. This makes his stories become incredibly moving to read. This is the most I’ve shed tears while reading a book.

One thing that I really like about Ken’s stories is the mixing of historical fact within the fantastical. While reading these amazing stories, you are learning about real world history because so many of his stories connect to events in the past. Ken focuses on Chinese and Japanese history in his stories and for most Western readers this creates a very refreshing narrative because not only do we want to learn more about the story but we also want to learn more about Eastern history and culture. The first story wasn’t one that I cared for, so don’t put this aside because of the first story. This collection is a great starting place to create or rekindle a love for short fiction.

The following stories were the stories that I gave a 5-star rating to:
1. “The Perfect Match” – An internet A.I. and service pushes you to make decisions that it suggests. This really made me think about what are really my own thoughts and which are influenced by the things I interact with on the internet.
2. “The Regular” – A novella or possibly novellete set in the future where it is commonplace for people to have robotics that are integrated with their brain. The story is a detective story of a private investigator tracking down a killer. If you like the show “The Fall” you would love this.
3. “The Paper Menagerie” – A boy grows up with a mother that is a “mail order bride” from China that does special origami that comes to life.
4. “Mono No Aware” – Earth is about to be destroyed and we send out spaceships to the far corners of the galaxy to survive. On board, a man attempts to keep his Japanese culture from dying.
5. “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” – We have gained the ability to see what really happened in past historical events but creates international tension when we know the truth.

4-Star rating stories:
1. “Simulacrum” – How do you deal with infidelity with simulations and not real people?
2. “State Change” – Life is difficult when your soul is attached to an object that must always be with you. Are you tethered to objects?
3. “Good Hunting” – Chinese magic gets destroyed as industrialization happens but is replaced by steampunk.
4.”The Literomancer” – A young girl befriends a political refugee that shows her the magic of Chinese characters.
5. “The Waves” – The evolution of a starfaring group.

3-Star rating stories:
1. “All the Flavors” – The god of war from China comes to the United States to work on the railroad and find gold. He befriends a young girl and her father.
2. “A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel” – The story of the workers working under the ocean to connect Asia and North America
3. ” The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” – A smooth-talking lawyer finds that there is much more to life than tricking the police when he protects a secret history book.

This short fiction collection by Neil Gaiman was fantastic. Like most collections there are some hits and misses but I felt like there were a lot more hits in this one than misses. I did status updates as I went along so that I could say what I liked or disliked about each short story. There are Hugo and Locus award winners in this collection along with an American Gods novella. Most of the shorts have a horror or supernatural fantasy element to them. I think that Gaiman’s ideas are either good or bad with me and don’t usually fall in the middle. This collection of short fiction is about the same. I really didn’t get most of the poetry but I’m not much of a poetry reader as it is.

There are a lot of dark short stories in this collection so be aware that this isn’t Gaiman writing kid stuff. I will definitely check out his Smoke and Mirrors and Trigger Warning collections too. I am going to list all the shorts and stuff below with my rating of each one. I recommend everything rated 4 and above.

5 Star
October in the Chair
Closing Time
Other People
The Day the Saucers Came

4 Star
The Hidden Chamber
Forbidden Brides…
Bitter Grounds
Keepsakes and Treasures
The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss French
How Do You Think It Feels!?
Feeders and Eaters
Sunbird
The Monarch of the Glen – the American Gods novella

3 Star
A Study in Emerald
Harlequin Valentine
Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot
Goliath
Journal in the Shoebox…

2 Star
Good Boys Deserve Favors
In the End
How to Talk to Girls at Parties
Inventing Alladin

Fortune Smiles is a collection of 6 short stories by Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson. These stories are highly imaginative about things that aren’t usually written about. This is my first experience with general short fiction and I enjoyed it. The following are my ratings for each short story in the book:

Nirvana – 3/5 An interesting premise about a man that creates a program that allows users to interact with a deceased, assassinated President, and he uses that program to talk about his wife that has Guillian-Barre syndrome. His wife makes him promise that he will kill her if she asks him to. Good at certain parts.

Hurricane Anonymous – 2/5 A story set after Hurricane Katrina hit and a man must raise his newly acquired son after his mother dropped him off right before the storm. Visually the story was great but the plot just didn’t gel with me.

Interesting Facts – 2/5 The story of a wife with cancer and the after-effects of that illness on the family. Too sentimental and cliche.

George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine – 5/5 An ex-East Germany prison warden that locked people up for going against the U.S.S.R. The prison he worked at has become a memorial but he denies that anything bad ever happened to the inmates. My favorite story in this collection. I loved the subject matter, the history, the main character, and the theme. Just a fabulous short.

Dark Meadow – 4/5 A story about a pedophile that is trying to figure out if he is a good or bad man that never harmed a child, and helps the police catch others. Unsettling, disgusting, and one of the most challenging things I ever read. I wanted to stop reading it many times, and I probably should have, but I wanted an insight, to somehow understand. I came to more of an understanding but I was extremely uncomfortable while reading this.

Fortune Smiles – 4/5 Two men from North Korea are trying to cope with what life is outside North Korea in South Korea. Good story that was written well and I like that Johnson makes these men miss things about North Korea. I also liked how they thought how frivolous certain things were in South Korea.

Overall, I enjoyed this short story collection. I definitely want to read The Orphan Master’s Son now. Johnson is a good writer that isn’t afraid to go into subjects that are difficult and not talked about much. I only recommend this collection for adults.